Electonic Arts: Only Half of Planned PlayStation 3 Consoles Shipped.

Chief executive of Electronics Arts Inc., a leading publisher of video games, said that Sony Corp. has only managed to supply only half of the planned PlayStation 3 amount on the launch date.

Originally Sony Computer Entertainment America said that it planned to supply 400 thousand PlayStation 3 units to the North America markets at launch and another 100 thousand for the domestic launch in Japan. However, later on the company had to cut down the allocation for Japan to 88.4 thousand units, which spurred rumours about possible reduction of the amount PS3s to be available at the launch date.

According to Mr. Larry Probst, who is chief executive officer at Electronic Arts, Sony shipped about 200 thousand of PlayStation 3 game consoles on the 17th of November. The number is considerably higher than 125 thousand, a pessimistic number predicted by some analysts. Nevertheless, it is still alarming that Sony cannot ship enough game consoles because of production problems.

By the end of 2006 Mr. Probst expects Sony to ship 500 to 800 thousand units in the United States, Reuters news-agency reported. Even though the “worst case” and “best case” amounts EA’s chief expects differ just too significantly, even the high-end expectations may indicate that Electronics Arts does not expect Sony to ship 2 million of PS3 game consoles this year.

Sony PlayStation 3 console is based on the Cell processor developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba, the RSX graphics chip by Nvidia Corp. and will be equipped with Blu-ray optical disk drive, a hardware part, which is merely available today.